CCP173: On Attending Multiple Churches

In this week's conversation between Dr. James Emery White and co-host Alexis Drye, they discuss the results of a multi-year study of about 24,000 church attenders that was conducted by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. The goal was to examine their church engagement. A particular finding stood out, which was that 46% of those 24,000 churchgoers reported active engagement with more than one church. For purposes of the study, they defined “active engagement” as attending in person, watching online or on TV, or taking part in both physical and virtual offerings. So this begs the question: What drives people to want to participate in a variety of church services? Episode Links During today's discussion, Dr. White outlined three categories of churchgoers: the church hopper, the church shopper and the church dropper. He also wrote a blog about this topic titled “Church Hopping, Shopping and Dropping,” which you can read HERE. It's also important to have a clear understanding of what Church is meant to be, and how we are called to engage with the community of the local church. Dr. White delivered a two-week series at Mecklenburg Community Church called “This Is Us,” which outlined the values and the mission of Meck. And then another incredibly helpful series was simply titled “Being Church” and explored what true biblical community looks like. You can find that series HERE. For those of you who are new to Church & Culture, we'd love to invite you to subscribe (for free of course) to the twice-weekly Church & Culture blog and check out the Daily Headline News - a collection of headlines from around the globe each weekday. We'd also love to hear from you if there is a topic that you'd like to see discussed on the Church & Culture Podcast in an upcoming episode. You can find the form to submit your questions at the bottom of the podcast page HERE.